The sanctions freeze any assets the targets might have in Canada and says they cannot enter the country. The United States has already done something similar.

Freeland says the sanctions are designed to target individuals who, are in the opinion of the government, responsible for or complicit in the writer’s October killing.

Khashoggi was a critic of the Saudi monarchy. Though he was living in exile in the United States, he went to the Saudi consulate in Istanbul to get paperwork for his impending marriage and never came out.

The Saudi government’s story about what happened has changed repeatedly, from questioning whether Khashoggi actually disappeared to admitting that he was killed by Saudi agents in what a prosecutor has called a bungled rogue operation to bring him back to Saudia Arabia.